Volunteer Resources

May 11, 2018

HEOR or HENU? Crab Team volunteers know it’s one of the most challenging questions we face during sampling. Telling hairy shore crabs (HEOR) apart from purple shore crabs (HENU) can be very tricky, especially when all you have is two tiny molted carapaces. It’s not only shore crabs; several groups of crabs can be tricky to distinguish from each other, even if you know what you are looking for.

As you learn a new set of species, whether it’s birds, ...

Growing up in Maryland, not too far from the Chesapeake Bay, crabs were a big part of local culture. As a schoolkid, I learned how to tell a male blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) from a female using a locally-relevant visual metaphor: Females have an abdomen shaped like the US Capitol building, and males have an abdomen shaped like the Washington Monument. Incidentally, this is also how I remember which monument was the Washington Monument ...

November 21, 2017

One strength of the Crab Team protocol is that it enables us to confidently compare findings among sites, and track changes over time – even if different people are doing the sampling. With sampling on this scale, even the small steps can be important to what we learn from the data. Protocol in Focus allows us to expand on these details, and offer an opportunity to see all the behind-the-scenes planning that goes into methodology.

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October 6, 2016 

The recent captures of invasive European green crabs, the first documented in Washington’s Salish Sea, have garnered a lot of recent media attention. We are thrilled that local residents are eager to help protect shorelines from this global invasive species and have set about looking for European green crabs as they walk the beach, paddle the waters, and pull up crab pots. Given 2,500 miles or so of shoreline, this network of “Eyes on the Beach” is critical to ...

September 8, 2016

One strength of the Crab Team protocol is that it enables us to confidently compare findings among different sites, and track changes over time – even if different people are doing the sampling. With sampling on this scale, even the small steps can be important to what we learn from the data. The Protocol in Focus allows us to expand on these details, and offer an opportunity to see all the behind-the-scenes planning that goes into methodology.

One of the most challenging parts of creating a sampling program ...

One strength of the Crab Team protocol is that it enables us to confidently compare findings among different sites, and track changes over time – even if different people are doing the sampling. With sampling on this scale, even the small steps can be important to what we learn from the data. The Protocol in Focus will allow us to expand on these details, and offer an opportunity to see all the behind-the-scenes planning that goes into methodology! 

Some volunteers have noticed that the Fukui traps are more often ...

One strength of the Crab Team protocol is that it enables us to confidently compare findings among different sites, and track changes over time – even if different people are doing the sampling. With sampling on this scale, even the small steps can be important to what we learn from the data. The Protocol in Focus will allow us to expand on these details, and offer an opportunity to see all the behind-the-scenes planning that goes into methodology! 

Almost every volunteer has had the question: When we measure crab size, ...